1 Miriam Reynoso Philosophy 110 Donald Jenner August 11, 2007 Stages of philosophy Philosophy has been around for centuries and there is a lot of history in its background that had influenced its changes. For this reason I will not be able to cover all the important aspects of Philosophy. It is hard to choose what is relevant and what is not because in Philosophy every movement and every occurrence are extremely crucial to its development. Philosophy is a very interesting topic, which helps you see the world in a completely new perspective. At the beginning of this course my knowledge about philosophy was not just limited was simply not existing. However, I found myself involved in the subject. I realized that for you to be able to understand a subject you have to start from the beginning. This project helped me to better understand what inspired the early philosophers and why we’re still amazed by their philosophies. Through the course of the next pages you will follow me in this history’s expedition to philosophy. I found that I knew more about philosophy than what I thought. Philosophy is all around us. We just don’t see it in the way we expected. When we find unanswerable questions or when we look at something bigger than us, we just have philosophy to illuminate us. Philosophy is the discipline concern with questions and knowledge. For instance, how we should live, the essential nature of things, genuine knowledge and correct rule of reasoning. Philosophy is regularly divided into periods. There are four main periods in philosophy: ancient philosophy (Pre-Socratic period, Socratic period, post -Socratic), medieval philosophy (Middle Ages), Modern philosophy and Contemporary philosophy. I will be discussing the key points of each period and background history. Historians have divided philosophy into Western and Eastern. This was the result of the influences of history, culture and geography on philosophy. I will focus my research on western philosophy (Ancient Greek philosophy). I will also concentrate on modern philosophy because most of the ideals we have today come from modern philosophy. Ancient philosophy Pre-Socratic period:

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2 We have limited knowledge of this stage of philosophy, but we know this stage marked the basis of the Greek’s philosophy. The term Pre-Socratic philosophy refers to the philosophy of those Greek philosophers before Socrates or contemporaneous which was fundamental to their philosophy in early knowledge. Pre-Socratic philosophers were characterized to favor rational explanations. Greek philosophy received its origins from Egypt (particularly their knowledge in physics and mathematics). Pre-Socratic philosophers (early philosopher) were concerned with the natural word. They questioned the origin and nature of the world. This period is highlighted by metaphysical speculation. Among the important philosophers of this period we can name: Pythagoras, Thales, Anaximander, Heraclitus, Anaximenes, Democritus, Parmenides and Empedocles. Unfortunately, only fragments of the pre-Socratic philosophy survived and had come to us from a

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